About the MVZ Facilities
The MVZ moved into renovated quarters in the Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB), UC Berkeley, in the fall of 1993. A total floor plan of 36,617 square feet houses: specimen storage areas and facilities for curation and preparation of specimens, including a wet lab and skeleton preparation lab; a frozen tissue facility that includes 12 ultracold freezers; a lab for biodiversity and museum informatics; numerous labs for molecular, microscope, image, video, and sound analysis; faculty, student, and researcher offices; a dark room; and libraries with scientific journals, books, reprints, and researchers' bound field notes.
The MVZ also has extensive computing facilities that include several servers and a 11-node Baeowolf cluster, ca. 100 fast ethernet connections, and computers for capture and management of collection data, genetic data analysis, Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis, and general use.